About Anne Roulin, SM/PROG

Sollier, Gillis, brother of Durand, had been a burgher at the Cape since 1697. In 1718 he was permitted to return to Europe with his wife Anna Roulin and son David. In 1731 he returned to the Cape with his wife Anna Roulin, his stepson Hendrik Melet, and his sister's daughter. In the list of enrolled members of the Dutch Church, Cape Town, Gillis and his wife are entered on 15th December, 1731, with attestation from Montfort.

The French Refugees at the Cape. Botha , Colin Graham

Soulliers in Boucher

Botha, who confuses the families of Gilles Sollier and the settler Durand Soullier, is evidently correct in assuming that the two men were brothers, despite the different spellings of the surname. ..

We shall have more to say about Gilles Sollier later in connection with the arrival at the Cape in 1731 of Andre Mellet and Marie Gautier. Mellet was from Nimes, the son of Claude Mellet, baptized on June 4, 1666 and still living in the French city in 1740. The surname Sollier is also of frequent occurrence in the Nimes registers of the reformed church. ... Gilles Sollier, the colonist whose business ability made him a useful intermediary in the Table Valley settlement for the legal and commercial transactions of inland farmers, joined the Cape church on October 4, 1697. The surname is common in Languedoc, but it would seem that he came either from Clermont-l’Herault, then known as Clermont- de-Lodeve, or more probably from Nimes. His parents had died before March 1699. His sons by Anne Roulain - David, baptized at the Cape on October 25, 1699, and Pierre, christened there on November 12, 1702 - provide no definite lead through their names to a Nimes background, but on the other hand the records of the Walloon church at Leyden mention a refugee David Soli (sic) from Clermont in Languedoc who was first given assistance in the Dutch town in October 1687.84 The Gilles Soulier (sic) who died a Catholic at Bernis, of Nimes, in 1701, could be related to the Cape refugee.

Marie Gautier of Marennes in Saintonge was the wife of Andre Mellet and doubtless the niece of Gilles Sollier, two men whose background remains to be touched upon. The daughter of Jacques Gautier and Marie Roulain, she and her husband reached the Cape in 1731, where she died in 1745. Anne Roulain was Sollier’s wife and also from Marennes.The name Roulain is not uncommon in the region. There were Roulains at Saint-Genis-de-Saintonge, north-west of Jonzac, who were using the temple at Cognac in the Angoumois for baptisms in 1684.65 The surname is also encountered among refugees from Jonzac and Saujon in England. An Anne Roulain of Saintonge, wife of the younger Ruvigny’s equerry Jean Nicolas, was in London in 1691.

M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 6: Cape settlers II: from the Rhone to the Atlantic p151; p149

Gilles’ stepson Hendrik Melet must be the child of Anne Roulain’s first husband – ie NN Melet. We can’t tell what the relationship was between NN Melet and Marie Gautier’s husband, Andre Melet from Nimes Languedoc (son of Claude Menet), but it seems likely they were of the same family, given that they are both connected by marriage to two Roulain women from the same place. [Sharon Doubell Nov 2016]